Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Viewpoints: Steps Necessary To Be Ready For The Next Pandemic; More Secular Addiction Treatment Needed
Late last year, I participated in an exercise meant to play out what might happen if the world was presented with a new disease spreading quickly, with no warning. (Tom Inglesby, 3/12)
In December, Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York unexpectedly vetoed a bipartisan bill that would have required judges to inform drug court participants of their right to choose nonreligious rehabilitation. (Maia Szalavitz, 3/11)
Student mental health was already at a low before lockdown; the pandemic exacerbated the issue and strained the relationship between student and counselor. Counselors say anxiety rates are up, and with a big developmental chunk missing from most student’s lives, social-emotional skills are suffering, too. This hits especially hard for teenage girls and LGBTQ students, studies say. (Nia Batra, 3/12)
About one-third of Americans say they don’t look forward to these twice-yearly time changes. And nearly two-thirds would like to eliminate them completely, compared to 21% who aren’t sure and 16% who would like to keep moving their clocks back and forth. (Beth Ann Malow, 3/11)
Twenty days. That’s how long patients in major metropolitan areas waited on average last year for an appointment with their primary care physician, according to a survey by AMN Healthcare, a firm that provides workforce solutions in the health care industry. (Geoff Rutledge, 3/13)
So masks don’t work after all? That’s the conclusion many conservatives took from a comprehensive analysis of the use of masks to prevent the spread of respiratory infections such as Covid-19 — and it’s led, naturally enough, to a lot of football-spiking and I-told-you-so’s. (Matthew Yglesias, 3/12)
The scourge of Alzheimer’s disease is dire, and especially so for rural Americans, who live farther from the metropolitan areas where research centers are concentrated. Medicare just announced it will continue to restrict coverage for cutting-edge treatments to these urban centers. If it doesn’t address the geographic inequity of care, millions of Americans living in our rural heartland will miss out on this new hope. (Betsy Huber, 3/10)
What if I told you that talking to a professional about one’s psychological woes might not be the answer to every problem? Or that there might be times when therapy actually does more harm than good? To be clear, I am a fan of therapy, and as a practicing psychiatrist for almost 20 years, I have witnessed many patients improve in treatment. However, the therapy-is-the-answer model is problematic for several reasons. (Samantha Boardman, 3/10)